


Rest and Recovery

by IndulgentDiscourse



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, arthur and john are brothers, van der linde gang as family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-14 14:34:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18950074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndulgentDiscourse/pseuds/IndulgentDiscourse
Summary: When Arthur had finally dragged himself back to camp, it had been a miracle that nobody had expected to occur. John had been sitting by the campfire, smoking with Charles and Sean, when he heard shouts from the edge of camp. It didn’t take him long to rush over to find Arthur on the ground, saying something to Dutch about a trap. Naturally, Dutch talked over him.“That all doesn’t matter, son. You’re safe now, Mister Morgan, you’re safe.”(A look at what happens after Arthur rescues himself from the O'Driscoll camp.)





	Rest and Recovery

_ The night was still and quiet. The growing Van der Linde gang was camped out in the middle of a forest, in a small clearing located about a day’s ride from Omaha. Tents were circled around a campfire that was starting to die down. The small flames flickered lower and lower as fireflies danced around the campsite. Cicadas called to each other non-stop as bats and the occasional owl flew overhead, briefly blocking out what little view of the stars managed to peer down through the treetops. A log popped before crumbling to ash and glowing embers.  _

 

_ A shout rent the air as a young John tossed and turned in his cot. He kicked the blankets down towards his feet, only to get them more tangled up in his legs. Across the tent, Arthur shot bolt upright in his bed, reaching for his gun on pure adrenaline. Years on the run gave him the ability to awaken at the sound of a pin dropping, and it took him a moment to realize that the danger wasn’t from any lawmen or intruders, just the boy across from him. Arthur quickly lit his lantern instead, holding it aloft. What he saw didn’t bring him much comfort.  _

 

_ John was hunched over on himself, panting heavily. One hand was on his throat, fingers shakily tracing their way over the puckered skin where a noose once rested. His other hand was pressed against his mouth. His shoulders shook, and his sucked in air from between his fingers. Arthur could see vague streaks cutting down John’s face.  _

 

_ Arthur was unsure of what to do. John was a little hellion, always had been since Dutch and Hosea took him in, and his moods varied wildly. He was just as likely to growl and snap at Arthur for saying something as he was to accept some form of comfort.  _

 

_ In the end, Arthur settled for leaving the lantern on and setting it on the ground next to his cot, and rolled over, pulling his blankets back up over his head. It wasn’t long until he heard fabric rustling and felt eyes boring into the back of his head.  _

 

_ “What you want, Marston?”  _

 

_ When Arthur rolled over again, John was standing beside his cot, arms crossed in a way that seemed standoffish to an outsider, but Arthur could see the way that shivers ran up the boy’s arms.  _

 

_ When John didn’t answer, Arthur sighed, and lifted the edge of the blankets up. Wordlessly, John crawled into the narrow cot next to him. He then immediately burrowed into Arthur’s side like a leech.  _

 

_ Arthur blearily reached around him and turned off the lantern. “You’re gettin’ too big for this,” he grumbled, but otherwise didn’t complain.  _

 

When Arthur had finally dragged himself back to camp, it had been a miracle that nobody had expected to occur. John had been sitting by the campfire, smoking with Charles and Sean, when he heard shouts from the edge of camp. It didn’t take him long to rush over to find Arthur on the ground, saying something to Dutch about a trap. Naturally, Dutch talked over him. 

 

“That all doesn’t matter, son. You’re safe now, Mister Morgan, you’re safe.” 

 

Arthur lost consciousness while being carefully pulled into his bed. Grimshaw began barking orders at Mary-Beth and Tilly to boil some water and find some clean bandages as she pulled a chair up to Arthur’s bedside. John hovered nearby. 

 

“Anythin’ I can do?” 

 

Grimshaw shook her heard. “Not until we get his wound dressed and ensure that there’s no infection.” John gnawed on his lip. Grimshaw’s gaze softened. “Go be with your family,” she directed him. “They’ll want to hear that he’s home safe.” At that, John mimed tipping his hat and made his way over towards the campfire where Abigail was talking with Hosea. 

 

Hosea tiredly smiled at John when he saw him coming. 

 

“He’ll be alright,” he said, kindly patting John on the shoulder. “He’s a tough fella, it takes more than a bullet to kill Arthur.” His gaze narrowed into a glare at something over John’s shoulder. “There’s something I have to take care of, why don’t we talk more in the morning?” Without waiting for a response from either John or Abigail, Hosea marched away towards Dutch’s tent where the other man had just disappeared to. 

 

Eventually, as the sun began to peek over the horizon, Grimshaw tapped John on the shoulder, startling him from where he was watching the waves lap against the shore. 

 

“You can sit with him now, if you’d like. He won’t be awake for a good while now, but he needs to be watched so he doesn’t get a fever.” 

 

Gratefully, John marched himself over to Arthur’s tent and sat at the chair by his feet. One tent over, Dutch and Hosea were arguing as they had been for the last few hours. Every once in a while, someone’s voice would rise along with their temper and carry throughout the area near the tent, only to be abruptly cut off again when someone remembered what time it was and that the original purpose of the conversation was to be private. 

 

At the moment, Hosea’s temper was getting the better of him. 

 

“-always say that we never cut anybody loose, but I didn’t see you putting in any effort to find him!” 

 

“We knew who had him, Hosea, I just had to figure out where they were! I sent men out to find him!” 

 

“You sent Micah, and we all know that that man would be more than happy if-“ At that, the volume died down again. 

 

John lit a cigarette and took a few idle puffs. It wasn’t long before the tent flap swung open and Hosea stormed out. “Sometimes I don’t know why I put up with you anymore, Dutch,” he said icily, before marching away towards the opposite side of camp. 

 

John scrubbed a tired hand through his hair, letting it fall around his face. He chuckled. 

 

“Remember that time you and Hosea tried to give me a haircut? An’ I had just joined the gang, and it kept gettin’ shit caught in it an’ Grimshaw always made a big deal about it, but I didn’t want it cut, so I ran out of camp away from y’all and I got caught by my hair crawling into a bramble bush? I’ve never seen you so mad at me and I’ve never seen Hosea laugh so hard.” 

 

John’s lips twitched up into a smile. “He laughed so hard that he ended up cryin’ on the ground and you had to cut my hair up into all these different ways just to get me out, an’ then when you dragged me back to camp Dutch started laughin’ too, so you took me into town to get the barber to fix it an’ you told him that I tried to cut my own hair an’ it didn’t go too well.” 

 

John talked until the sun sat proudly in the sky and then some. Every so often, he would place his hand on Arthur’s forehead, checking that the fever stayed at bay. Eventually, he ran out of stories to tell the unconscious man and leaned forwards, resting his forehead on Arthur’s cot. He just wanted to rest his eyes for a few minutes... 

 

Sometime later, John was awoken by a hand shaking his shoulder. Blearily, he look up to Hosea’s smile. “Go get some rest, son,” he said, helping John to his feet. “I’ll sit with him for now.” 

 

_ The first month with Arthur was hard on all of them. The boy was quiet most of the time. He only talked to Dutch or Hosea when he was spoken to first. He did his chores without complaint, though he preferred to draw in the dirt and dust around camp with a stick when left to his own devices. He took to reading and writing lessons with ease and riding and shooting lessons even easier, but he never seemed to ask for anything beyond what was given to him. Simply put, Arthur Morgan was a mystery to Dutch and Hosea.  _

 

_ “I have no idea what goes on in that mind of his,” Dutch murmured late one night to Hosea, after the couple had gone to bed. “Sure, he likes his studies, he’s a smart young man, but it’s near impossible to get through to him.” Hosea rolled over, studying the canvas above him, deep in thought. “I’ll keep an eye on him the next few days. Odds are, he’s probably trying to figure us out as well. I’ll see if there’s anything he really takes a shine to.” “Hmm.” Beside him, Dutch rumbled, mind spinning and wheeling. A master of manipulation was useless against a target that gave no hints, no weaknesses. “We know he likes to write and draw. Maybe we could get him a sketchbook or something of sorts?” “That could work. We’ll add it to the list.”  _

 

_ Over the next few days, the couple kept a close eye on Arthur. Hosea took him fishing, and that garnered about as much interest as regular hunting lessons. Dutch taught him how to play poker, and while Arthur smiled when he won a few rounds, it wasn’t much. It wasn’t until late one afternoon that Hosea was reading the paper in the shade of a tree near camp that he heard gentle crooning sounds. His curiosity piqued, he put the paper away and crept near the source of the sound.  _

 

_ He found Arthur, gently brushing down the horses. When he finished with the brushing, he pet them, all the while whispering and talking softly to them.  _

 

_ “Yeah, you’re a good girl, ain’tcha? You want a treat?” Arthur slipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out a few sugar cubes that he then gave to the horses. Hosea remembered the other day how annoyed he was when he couldn’t find any sugar to put in his tea, but the annoyance soon faded as he watched Arthur pat the neck of one of the shire horses they used to carry their belongings.  _

 

_ That night, Hosea went to bed with a smile on his face and a plan in his head. After a few rounds of pickpocketing in the local town, he and Dutch had enough money to take Arthur to the nearest stables. _

 

_ “Pick any horse you like, son,” he said, resting a gentle hand on Arthur’s shoulders. “We’re on the move so much, it’s only fair you get your own.” With that permission, Arthur was off like a shot, moving from one stall to another. Eventually, he decided on a beautiful silver mustang.  _

 

_ When the three of them trotted out of town, Hosea asked Arthur, “What are you going to name her?” Arthur studied the horse below him. She tossed her head and snorted. He thought for a long moment, before replying: “Boadicea.” “And why’s that?” “It was the name of an old queen in a book Dutch is havin’ me read ‘bout history. Thought it sounded nice.”  _

 

_ Hosea didn’t have to look to feel Dutch positively swelling with pride next to him.  _

 

Hosea sat with his son, attempting to read a book as he did. It did a poor job of distracting him from the man lying prone in front of him. He’d always loved Arthur like a son, ever since he and Dutch had found that scrawny boy trying to pick their pockets in a back alley one fateful day. While Arthur had grown up molded by the influence of those around him, Hosea was truly proud of the man that Arthur had become. He was a good man in a sea of despicable people, and he had saved their lives countless times. Why Dutch hadn’t done more to try and find Arthur when he went missing, he couldn’t understand. Arthur was just as much Dutch’s son as he was Hosea’s. 

 

Hosea became so lost in thought that it took him longer than it should have to notice when Arthur began shivering. Grimshaw had loosely tucked a blanket around him from the waist down, but it was sweltering in the mid afternoon Lemoyne sun. Hosea felt Arthur’s forehead only to recoil from the heat radiating off it. Fever was a very bad thing indeed. 

 

“Miss Grimshaw, I need your help over here!” When Grimshaw bustled over, Hosea explained as fast as he could. Cursing, Grimshaw ran to the lake as fast as she could and returned with a bucket of water. She placed soaked bandages and rags on all of Arthur’s exposed skin. “Keep him cooled off, Mister Matthews,” she ordered, carefully examining the ugly gunshot wound. “It doesn’t look infected yet, but there’s always a chance. It’s likely that this is just a way of reacting to the stress of the whole incident, but we gotta be careful.” She turned away, shouting over her shoulder as she did. “I’ll see if we have anything good for fevers on hand, and if not, I’ll send someone into town to pick something up.” 

 

Not long after that did Hosea see a harried-looking Uncle ride out of camp. Arthur tossed and turned, moving for the first time since his return to camp. He fumbled with the blankets with his good arm, and Hosea took pity on his son and pulled the blankets up to his shoulders. Arthur stopped shifting around, but his eyes didn’t open. However, he did briefly mumble something that sounded like a tired “Thank you.” 

 

_ The ride down from Colter was hard on all of them. From the blow they suffered collectively in the failed ferry heist to the loss of several of their number to the extreme shift in the hard weather, there was just struggle after struggle after struggle. Though Charles didn’t speak about it as openly as everyone else in the gang, he too had his fair share of challenges. Doing work, getting into the swing of a normal routine was something that helped him adjust to the sudden changes. It felt good, being able to provide for his friends, being able to make his contribution.  _

 

_ Hunting was an easy way to do that. Charles liked that his hunting trips were a chance for him to take a break from the bustle of normal camp life. He liked that he could be on his own, just him and the land and his own thoughts. Just him and whatever he brought back for dinner the next night.  _

 

_ He was surprised after that hunting trip with Arthur that the other man was so keen to go hunting with him again. Charles didn’t like getting violent like that. He kept his anger carefully tucked away, only unleashed at the people who deserved it. He wouldn’t even say that he was an angry man, and he knew that others would agree with him. The incident with the poachers was a one-time incident. In fact, on the ride up to their camp, he was caught by surprise the anger that had been building inside him ever since he discovered the first slaughtered bison. He had just been sad, sad that the life of such an important, rare, and majestic creature was so carelessly tossed away, all to further the agenda of some self-important white man.  _

 

_ Suffice it to say, Charles was surprised to find that Arthur sought out opportunities to do different jobs or go hunting with him. He was possibly even more surprised that he didn’t mind his company. _

  
  


_ The two of them had been hunting for the past two days. They’d caught a few deer and sold them to the butcher in Valentine before deciding to get a few drinks at the saloon before camping out for one more night.  _

 

_ They’d sat around the campfire and talked, sharing a bottle of whiskey between them. After a while, they turned their attention to the stars overhead and Arthur pointed out constellations above them. Charles played a tune on his harmonica while Arthur did something in his journal. After a while, Charles paused his music.  _

 

_ “You know, there’s a lot of gossip about what you put in that journal,” he teased. Across the fire, Arthur shrugged. “Probably not a whole lot you’d find interesting in there,” he said, tilting his hat a little lower across his face. Maybe it was the whiskey, or the heady rush of starlight and woodsmoke, but Charles found himself being bolder than normal. “I think anything you have to say is interesting.”  _

 

_ If it weren’t for the way that the firelight flickered across Arthur’s face, Charles would have sworn that he was blushing. For a long moment, neither of them moved a muscle, said a word, and then Arthur was inching closer to him, holding out his journal to an open page. Charles took it from him, his fingers brushing Arthur’s hand as he did.  _

 

_ On the page was a drawing, a detailed illustration of Charles with his head tilted up, looking at the stars. Charles briefly considered running a finger over the detail obviously sketched with a loving and careful hand, but he didn’t want to run the risk of smudging the lead.  _

 

_ “It’s incredible,” he said, finally handing the journal back. “Thank you for showing me.” Arthur shrugged again. He searched for words for a moment, leaning back on his hands.  _

 

_ “I like to put things that I want to remember in there. You, Mister Smith, I want to remember real well.”  _

 

_ Without a word, Charles copied Arthur’s pose, letting their hands brush as their shoulders were pressed against each other, the both of them carefully not looking at the other and watching the stars.  _

 

It was nearing sunset by the time that Uncle returned from Rhodes with the medicine, and in that time, Arthur had not gotten any better. Maybe ten minutes after Uncle rode off, Hosea cursed in a way that was supposed to be quiet but was in reality very loud, and he beckoned Charles over from where he was splitting wood. 

 

“Come sit with him, will you? I’m going to see if I can’t find any plants nearby that might help him and he needs someone to keep him cooled off.” 

 

“Sure thing.” Charles propped the axe up against the stump and made his way over to the tent. There, Arthur shivered under the blanket, bandages wrapped around his left shoulder. Wet rags were placed on his forehead and neck, and when Charles checked them, they were only damp, so he wrung them out as best as he could and wet them in a bucket next to Arthur’s cot, replacing them as they were. At the contact of the cool water, Arthur twitched, his shivers growing stronger. One eye blearily opened, and Arthur muttered, “‘s too cold.” Charles hurriedly swiped a canteen from Arthur’s bedside table and opened it, handing it to the other man. 

 

“Here, drink some of this,” he coaxed. Arthur managed a few sips before shivers wracked him so hard his teeth started chattering. He plucked at the rag on his forehead before Charles caught his hand and held it in his own. Arthur blinked a few times before focusing on Charles. 

 

“What’re you doin’ here?” Charles smiled at him. “We’ve been waiting for you to wake up. It’s been about a day since you rode into camp again.” He squeezed Arthur’s hand, and felt gratified when Arthur squeezed back. 

 

The two sat in comfortable silence for the better part of an hour before Arthur dozed off again. Soon after, Hosea returned empty-handed from the woods surrounding camp. He didn’t have to wait long, however, because soon after Uncle skidded back into camp with the medicine. 

 

Charles prodded Arthur awake as Hosea approached holding the bottle of tonic. 

 

“Here, son, take this. We’ve got to get that fever of yours under control.” Grumbling, Arthur allowed Hosea to help him drink down the medicine before slumping back down into his pillow. Moments after, sleep overtook him once more and he dozed off, still holding Charles’ hand. Hosea raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say a word, something Charles was exceedingly grateful for. 

 

“Come get someone to sit with him when you need a break,” Hosea offered, “and get one of us when his fever breaks. Hopefully it’ll be sometime tonight, and I’d like someone conscious to be there when he comes back to himself.” The older man laughed to himself. “I caught John dozing in here earlier.” The corners of Charles’ lips twitched upwards. “Sure thing, Hosea.” 

 

As it turned out, nobody was there when Arthur’s finally awoke, his fever gone. Grimshaw had run to get more bandages before changing his old ones, and she came back to Arthur trying in vain to push himself upright. 

 

In the days that passed as Arthur began to heal up, it became evident just how much the gang relied on him to keep things running. In the end, it came down to Hosea to come up with a roster of chores for various people to take over while Arthur was on bed rest. People complied with few complaints, pitching in to take up the slack that was left in Arthur’s absence. 

 

The one big problem in the plan was Arthur. 

 

For as long as he could recall, he’d had chores to do and leads to follow up damn near every single day he was a member of the gang. He wasn’t a man who was used to just sitting back and taking it easy, and forced bedrest drove him absolutely insane. 

 

At first it was easy to keep the boredom away with writing and drawing in his journal. He would watch the bustle of camp life from his cot and draw some of the more memorable scenes, like the time when Tilly and Mary-Beth stopped from their work for a moment to pause for a chat. Tilly had whispered something in Mary-Beth’s ear that made her laugh so hard that she dropped the sock she had been darning, and Arthur quickly took the moment to sketch the scene. There was the time that Cain had gotten bold and snatched a whole rabbit off of the table in front of Pearson, right after John had put it down after a long day of setting snares in the woods. Arthur messily drew the culprit in action, and then did a more detailed drawing of Cain, his prize resting at his paws, his big doggy grin on display for all to see. 

 

After a while, the boredom became a little more difficult to fend off. Arthur borrowed books and papers from Hosea and Dutch when he could, but he had read most of them already and they didn’t hold his attention that well anymore. 

 

It was during one such day that Jack came wandering over to his tent. 

 

“Hi, Uncle Arthur!” 

 

Arthur sat up from where he had been reading the same paragraph in the paper for the last five minutes. 

 

“Hey, Jack. What’s goin’ on?” 

 

Jack beamed up at him. “Uncle Hosea is out of camp right now but I’m bored, and Mama said that maybe you could read to me? She’s working on her sewing right now.” 

 

Arthur considered for a less than a second before patting the chair next to his bed. “Sure, climb on up here and you can help me read the paper, how’s that sound?” 

 

Slowly, with Arthur’s help, Jack read through the column about hunting and fishing. Afterwords, he leapt off to go play with Cain, but he was back the next day, and the next day, all until Arthur was well enough to finally leave his bed and sit around camp. 

 

Near the end of his time on forced bedrest, Arthur began to get irritable and antsy. He wasn’t one to just sit around, and the fact that that was all he was allowed to do drove him to try and wheedle his way out of it. 

 

“C’mon, just for a little while,” he pleaded to Hosea. Hosea was sat in the chair at the foot of Arthur’s cot, and the first time Arthur had tried to beg his way into getting up, Hosea had listened with a gentle expression and a sympathetic pat on his good arm. Ten minutes of whining had passed, however, and now he pretended to be totally absorbed in his newspaper, completely ignoring Arthur. 

 

Eventually after a week and a half, Arthur was given the all-clear to get up and walk around camp, with strict instructions to not do anything strenuous or else he’d run the risk of re-opening the bullet hole. 

 

The first thing Arthur did after being allowed to wander around the camp was to make his way over to where his horse was. Scarlet, his blood bay thoroughbred mare, was being gently brushed down by Lenny when he approached. Lenny quickly excused himself with a kindly “I’ll give you two a moment,” and went on to go tend to some other chore further away in camp. 

 

“Hey there, girl,” Arthur greeted her. Scarlet burred and tossed her head a few times as Arthur pet her neck. He pulled out a peppermint from his saddlebag and gave it to her. She munched away as Arthur leaned his forehead against hers. He remembered the struggle to escape from the O’Driscoll camp, the fear he felt as he dragged himself onto her back. She had carried him home even after he had collapsed on top of her back, back to his family. 

 

“You’re a good girl, you’re a brave girl,” he murmured. “Thank you.” 

 

He stayed with his horse until he caught sight of Kieran hovering around in the corner of his eye. The boy needed to get to his chores that concerned the care and keeping of the horses but he was obviously wary of interrupting Arthur. Arthur pat Scarlet one more time on the nose and stepped away, tipping his hat to Kieran as he passed. 

 

The next few days were hard for Arthur. He was used to getting up at the crack of dawn to go out and provide for the gang, and old habits died hard. He ended up begging some chores off of people who mostly hung around the camp, just for the sake of having something to do. He wiped tables down instead of Kieran, he helped Abigail chop up vegetables for Pearson’s stew. He helped Jack with some of his reading, though he wasn’t always the best teacher in his opinion. He took over feeding the chickens for a while instead of Sadie. 

 

He always liked taking care of the chickens. It was one of the first chores that Dutch and Hosea taught him to do. All he had to do was collect any eggs and throw out feed to them in the morning. He was fond of the little birds, but he was careful not to get attached to them too much. He still remembered the shock that came from finding out Little Missy, who he had raised from the time she hatched, wound up in the stew once she stopped laying eggs. 

 

“Good morning, ladies,” he called every morning, throwing handfuls of feed onto the ground. The birds swarmed him and he carefully made his way around them once the bucket of feed was empty. 

 

In the end, the ladies around camp took pity on him. 

 

“Come join us, Arthur,” called Mary-Beth from where she was sitting by a wagon, a pair of someone’s trousers in hand. “We’d just love some of your company!” Tilly, who was sitting nearby at the washboard, giggled. 

 

As soon as Arthur took a seat next to Mary-Beth, she pushed the pants she was holding as well as a needle and some thread into his hands. “Stop mopin’ around so much,” she cheerfully ordered. “You look so sad once you’ve bullied everyone out of their chores around camp, Karen and I figured that you might as well learn to sew.” 

 

Arthur looked at the cloth in his hands. “Miss Mary-Beth,” he hesitantly began, “I dunno if you want someone like me to be messin’ up your sewin’, I wouldn’t want Miss Grimshaw to be gettin’ on you about shoddy work.” 

 

Tilly regarded him cooly with a raised eyebrow. “So you’re sayin’ that a little sewin’ is too hard for you, the great Arthur Morgan? What, are you scared of a little needle?” 

 

At that, Arthur considered his options for a moment. He could leave, but then he knew that Karen would be out for blood later. He’d never be able to show his face to the girls in camp without it being mocked relentlessly. He could stay, do some work, and learn a new skill. 

 

He nodded, pulled his hat down lower to cover his face, and picked up the needle. 

 

“How do I start this?” 

 

In the end, with too many little stab wounds to count, he finished patching up the pants. 

 

The two and a half weeks it took for his shoulder to heal up went by too slowly for his liking. The morning after Grimshaw cleared him to go back to his normal work, he sat at the dock overlooking the lake. Arthur pulled out his journal and set it on his lap, but he didn’t write anything in it just yet. He watched the waves lap against the shore, watched the sunlight reflect off the water. Behind him, he heard the camp start to come to life as various people awoke to face the new day. Later he would have to go hunting again, have to confront the mess that Dutch was making of the two warring families, have to get back to the business of being the strongest lieutenant in the Van der Linde gang. 

 

But for the moment, Arthur sighed peacefully, listened to his family behind him, and began to write. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I hope y'all liked it, it's my first time writing anything for rdr2 so I hope I got everyone's voices and characterization right. Please comment if you liked it; comments feed the writer. Come find me on tumblr at russet-moon!


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